High Tunnel Small Fruit Production

Research projects have been conducted on the culture of strawberries and brambles in high tunnels at Penn State's Center for Plasticulture (http://plasticulture.cas.psu.edu). Conclusions from this research are that strawberries in high tunnels will produce fruit about 3 weeks earlier in the spring compared to plasticulture production in the field, with about a 25% yield increase. Bramble fruit production has shown tremendous yield increases over field production, with primocane-bearing raspberries producing a fall crop 2 to 3 times as great as that expected from field production in addition to production of a summer crop. Harvest in the fall has been extended at least 3 weeks later than that normally expected for field production. However, the harvest season also starts earlier, so a selection of cultivars, including those previously thought to be too late a given location, should be included to fill out the entire potential harvest season, or plants of one cultivar can be tipped to delay production. With high tunnels, production from thornless blackberries is made possible in a climate too cold for field production. A Wyeberry (red raspberry x blackberry hybrid) selection has also performed well in this setting.